


A Lesson in Friendship

by IHeShe



Series: On Friendship. [1]
Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Gen, Graphic Description, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:40:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28966974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IHeShe/pseuds/IHeShe
Summary: In which Ara finds out that they might have unknowingly let someone really dangerous inside the El Search Party.
Series: On Friendship. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2136537
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	A Lesson in Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Gore, Graphic Depiction of Violence, Torture. Read at your own discretion.

**A Lesson in Friendship  
**

The hallway was dark. So dark she could hardly see her own two feet. There was a figure in front of her, someone clad in a robe as black as a moonless night. He -or she, perhaps?- was tall, well over two meters in height. She could barely make out a small part of the person's silhouette thanks to a very small source of light they were carrying in front of them, most likely a candle. An iron chain, heavy and somewhat rusty, each ring thicker than one of Ara's thumbs, was poking out from underneath their cloth, its other end linked to the collar around her neck: two thick pieces of metal held firmly together by large padlocks. It was tight around her throath, so much so that she could feel it pushing against her neck, applying an unnerving pressure on her skin and flesh, albeith without actually preventing her from breathing.

Behind her was another person, perfectly identical to the one leading the way, its lowered hood keeping the face hidden in the shadows. In its hands, covered in black gloves, were another candle and another chain, linked to her collar just like the first one, but on the opposite end. It felt more like a reflection of what was in front of her rather than an actual, second individual walking a few steps behind her.

Possibly because neither of the two made any sound. All she could hear was her own breath.

Her chest was clad in a straitjacket, each sleeve bound individually behind her back, holding her arms in place. Her thighs, too, were firmly held together with three leather belts, each dotted with tiny metal spikes on the inner side. While they weren't too big, she could feel their sting all too clearly, a sharp, weak but constant pain in her legs, accentuated by every step she had to take. Around her ankles were yet more iron restraints. Needlessly large, their size's only purpose was weighting her down. Between them was a steel bar, keeping her feet at a fixed distance from each other. Combined with the belts around her tighs, it forced her into an uncomfortable posture, as well as making her unable to walk properly.

She didn't know where she was. Or rather, she had no idea. She didn't even remember how she had gotten into such a situation in the first place, and she had no clue about who those two figures might be. Yet, or maybe exactly because of that, she wasn't afraid. She was nervous, yes, really nervous but, probably due to her naturally positive attitude, the complete lack of informations wasn't that scary to her. Rather, it was more... unsettling.

"W... where are we?" she resolved to ask.

No response.

"Who are you people?"

They ignored her again, as if they had no ears to hear her with. The same scene repeated itself a few more times, until Ara decided to just stop. Thinking about it, she couldn't even remember for how long they'd been walking.

After a while she had a change of heart and tried asking why she was there. Once again, however, the hooded figures paid no attention to her and simply kept moving forward, slowly but surely. So she stopped walking. The chain held by the one in front of her began to tense with every further step away from her it took, until Ara felt a tug against her neck. She tried to resist it, unsteady as she was in such restraints, but she almost immediatly realized that either she started moving again, or she'd end up falling down. And were they to just drag her forward in such fashion... she didn't even want to imagine what would happen to her neck then. So she hurried forward, getting at a more comfortable distance.

That's when she started sweating. Nervousness beginning to turn into something worse, she asked again. Who they were, what place that was, how she had ended up her, or even just why. Their silence eventually exasperated her. So much so that she started running -or doing the closest thing to running her restraint allowed her to- until she bumped against the figure leading the way, if only to get some sort of reaction out of it. All she got from that, however, was pain, as if she had just ran into an hedge. Yet she tried again, and then once more, but it was as if they weren't even registering her presence.

So she shouted, the only response she received being her own voice echoing in the hallway. Or what she guessed to be an hallway at least.

Despite walking barefooted on cold steel, she was starting to feel hot. Sweat ran down her skin, but she couldn't even wipe it off her forehead. She had no idea how long they had been walking for. Her legs had gotten tired, and even a bit sore. Droplets of blood had been falling from her thighs for almost the whole time, the tiny spikes slowly but constantly moving around with every step. What little light there was had grown even dimmer, and when she looked behind herself she realized that the candles were nearly extinguished.

Scared. Now she was getting scared.

The silence grew louder, filling her ears with its deafening nothingness, until she started talking. To the two robed figures, at first, but after just a couple of sentences she resigned to the fact that she wasn't getting any response from either of the two. Yet she didn't turn back to quietness. Instead, she spoke to herself. In truth, what she was doing was actually trying to figure out what might be happening by going over her last memories. She had merely decided to do so verbally rather than mentally to keep the silence at bay.

They were still travelling together. Her, Eve, Chung, Elsword, Rena, that weird child they had met recently, everyone. They had just arrived in a new city, found an inn to stay at for the night, had dinner, and... they had... gotten into a small argument over something... she couldn't quite remember what it was about, something trivial, then... then what?

The light died out.

Left in complete darkness, Ara raised her voice in response. The straitjacket was apparently made of some non permeable material as her sweat stuck to her own skin without dampening the cloth, a feeling uncomfortable in its own right. By that point her legs had gone almost completely numb. The pain in her thighs had grown weaker, but she was afraid that might have been caused by something other than her getting used to it. She was bleeding. Ever so slowly, but she was bleeding, and she had no idea how much time had gone by. How much blood had she lost?

Nothing had really happened yet, but her nerves were starting to crack. How longer would she be forced to move forward for? For how long could she keep that up? She was still talking to herself, about nothing and everything, and while the sound of a voice, even her own, helped her remain if not calm then at least not as nervous, the side effect was that her throat was starting to dry a bit.

She suddenly bumped against something, and quickly recognizing the same feeling from earlier. They had stopped? Maybe they'd gotten to their destination, whatever or wherever it might be? Her words came to an alt, her mind focusing on the thin line of light that appeared beyond the robed figure, tearing the darkness in two. A large door, massive even, swung open. The light within was so intense -... or maybe she had gotten too used to the shadows?- it almost blinded Ara, forcing her to close her eyes. Mere moments later she felt her collar being pulled again, forcing her to walk without even seeing where, despite all the light aviable. A cruel joke, that was.

Then, something changed. The silence finally broke as she heard metallic sounds around her. Hands suddenly reached for her, grabbing her helpless body and guiding her into what felt like a chair. It was... comfortable, much to her surprise. She couldn't see anything yet but... were those pillows she was resting on? The chain attached to the back of her collar got yanked without a warning, painfully pulling her neck, forcing her back high against the backrest. She then felt like her eyes had gotten somewhat used to the light. And so she opened them, albeith slowly.

She was resting on an exquisite wooden chair, sturdy yet refined, and next to her was a table just as fine, though oddly high, its surface being right beneath her shoulder. She was sitting right next to it, with one arm facing it.

Nice as the table and chair were, the contrast between their appearance and the rest of the room sent a chill up her spine. Utterly empty walls made of stone surrounded them, with absolutely nothing adorning them. There was a door on her left, the one they had just walked in through probably, and she actually couldn't tell what -if anything- was on the wall behind her. The chain on the back of her collar ran though an hole in the backrest, while the one in front of it was attached to a ring in the wall in front of her. Both chains were tense, holding her collar firmly in place, and with how tight the metal was around her neck, she couldn't even turn her head around without scratching her skin against the iron. She couldn't even see any source of light, leaving her confused as to where it might be coming from.

The two robed figures then loosened the tie at the end of one of her straitjacket's sleeves, grabbing her now free arm and forcibly putting it on the table while rolling the sleeve up, all the way to her shoulder. She tried to resist, but there wasn't much she could do in that situation, or rather, she couldn't really escape anyway in that situation. As one of the two held her limb down with all its weight, the other one started walking around the table, stopping only to pull something out from beneath it.

It was barbed wire.

"... w... wait"

The hooded figure remained indeed still, giving her some hope. It didn't move for a second. Two. Three.

And then it sprung to action.

Ara told it to stop again, shouting this time, her voice bouncing against the wall and somehow coming back to her own ears even louder than when it had left her mouth, but that didn't seem to faze her captor in the slightest. She tried to get away but, between the chains linked to her collar, the straitjacket and the other robed figure holding her arm down, she found herself unable to escape, no matter how much she trashed around. Actually, the only thing she got for her attempts was pain as the iron around her neck dug slightly into her flesh.

The wire then reached her skin, its cold surface running around her wrist a few times before being brought up to her hand. The spikes were getting pushed into her skin, and her attempts at pulling away could do nothing but drag them across her flesh, blood seeping from the wounds. She eventually stopped struggling when the wire got tangled around her whole hand, even going around each individual finger separately, for at that point moving further would have done nothing but worsen the situation. The hooded figure then moved to the other side of the table and pulled the wire, causing a sharp pain to run through her hand as it seemed to fasten it to something beneath the wooden surface, ultimately fixing her limb in place.

"What's this? What are you doing?"

The exasperation in her voice was turning into something worse, nervousness having become fear instead. Her legs were shaking a bit, and only a bit, which was in a way an impressive display of self control, one might argue.

"Why am I even here?!" she shouted as both robed figures disappeared from her line of sight.

A sound other than her own words reached her ears. A door, she'd have guessed. It came from behind her back, where she couldn't see, and moments later both her captors disappeared from her sight, probably headed to the other room. She took the chance to try and break free, but neither the wire nor the chains were showing any sign of giving in. So she tried to somehow get her other arm out of the straitjacket, but once again with no success. It didn't take long for the robed figures to come back. One went behind her and ran a leather belt around her waist, fastening her to the chair. The other moved to the other side of the table and put something on it. A roll of hard cloth, or maybe leather if not something else entirely, the kind used to carry around tools and instruments apparently. Her breathing stopped momentarily as she watched it unfold the package, which remained standing, its content still hidden from her. Then the figure pulled something out of it.

A scalpel.

Color drained from her face as the blade, whiter than snow and sharper than glass, was moved against her arm, the tip resting against the barbed wide that cruelly restrained her.

"W-wait, you're... you're not going to... wai- !"

She instinctively gritted her teeth as the scalpel was pushed down, piercing her skin and incising her flesh, the blade then moving along her arm as if it were paper, leaving behind a trail of lively red, horrifying in its implications. The figure kept dragging the tool across her arm, stopping at mere inches from her shoulder. It was at that point that Ara's jaw relaxed, if only a bit, and she took a deep breath, sweat running down her face as she tried to bear with the sensation. Then the blade started moving again, along the same line but in the opposite direction. A scream left her mouth before she could grit her teeth again, the tip of the scalpel occasionally bumbing against a still uncut layer of flesh, an especially sharp pain filling her mind every time that happened.

At last, the tool was removed from her limb. Her breathing heavy, Ara found her eyes fixed on the line that had just appeared on her arm, warm blood spilling forth from within, the pain still fresh and pulsating. And exactly because she couldn't bring herself to look away, she saw the figure placing the scalpel on her skin again, perpendicularly to the previous direction.

"Stop! Wait, n- !"

Her pleas ignored, another cut appeared on her skin, joining the first one at her wrist, only for a third one to follow right after, this time next to her shoulder.

"W... why... ?" she managed to ask once more, tears streaming down her face.

For the first time, the robed figure seemed to turn towards her, and yet she couldn't see anything under its hood. For a moment, just a brief moment, she hoped she could finally get an answer, something that might help her make sense of what was happening.

That, however, didn't happen. The figure turned its head back towards her arm and, after having placed down the scalpel, grabbed her skin on both sides of the fresh cut. Ara tried closing her eyes, but doing so only made her focus even more on the feeling of her skin being pulled apart, open, like folds of paper, a feeling she had never thought she could experience coursing through her. Yet she waited before opening her eyes again, until she could no longer feel the touch of gloves over her limb.

What she saw nearly made her throw up, the sight of her own arm exposed, her skin resting on the sides of the table, baring everything it was supposed to hide, the cut running in her flesh. Despite the pain grounding her mind to the situation, the whole thing felt somehow... fake. Surreal. That... that couldn't really be happening, right?

"This... this is a joke, right? It has to be" she asked, tears blurring her vision as something vaguely resembling a laugh could be heard from her own mouth.

"This is just an hallucination, right?!" she asked again as the figure grabbed some other tools.

"This is fake... it must be... " she said, her voice growing louder with every word as the cold steel of a plier reached for her muscles, pulling them up slightly, nausea assaulting her, an horrible taste beginning to form in her mouth.

"Stop... stop... stop, stop, stop stop sto - !"

A scissor snapped close, its blades severing her muscle fibers, making a noise she had never heard before. A sound she didn't recognize left her mouth and filled her ears, deafening her. For a brief, blissful moment her mind went blank, sparing her from what had just happened. Then, however, the pain reached her brain. More pain than she thought was possible to feel. Excruciating, searing pain running through her limb all the way to her head as blood poured down onto the table. Unable to control herself anymore, her screams echoing within the small room, Ara's body thrashed around as wildly as it could against its restraints, the barbed wire digging into her hand and fingers, tearing bits and pieces of both skin and flesh off as she desperately tried to run, to pull her arm back, to hide, to do something, anything, the iron leaving scratches on her neck as she wiggled uncontrollably.

Another cut followed, but Ara refused to look, fixing her gaze on the wall instead. The pain was unbearable, completely clouding her mind, pushing any and all coherent thoughts out of it, tears streaming down her cheeks as her throat grew drier and drier, her ears starting to ring from her own screams.

The scissors snappen open and close a few more times, but she heard none of it. She didn't even notice when it all came to an alt, for the pain persisted, and with it the nausea. She didn't know what compelled her to move her gaze back to the table. Maybe a faint, nonsensical hope that she'd see her arm still in pristine conditions. Maybe morbid curiosity. Maybe she had realized that the cutting had stopped. She had no idea.

But no. What she saw was just blood, covering the wooden surface her arm was resting on. Her limb was still cut open, and from its whole length were missing entire chunks of muscles, neatly laid out next to her. The cuts themselves were perfectly clean, and only the muscles had been severed, leaving everything else perfectly intact. Aside from her hand, which had been reduced to a bloody mess due to her trashing against the barbed wire.

Maybe it was the stench, an horrible smell that reminded her of death itself, or maybe the sight alone would have been enough. Either way, she threw up, the content of her stomach sullying her own legs, its stink mixing with the other odors, further worsening her nausea. Then she vomited again, or at least her body tried to, but there was nothing left in her stomach.

Had she been able to think straight, she'd have wondered if she was really supposed to still be conscious, let alone alive, after all that. Surely the shock should have been enough to knock her out? But her head was filled with pain, only pain and terror.

The door opened again, and she heard footsteps. Someone walked in front of her. She had seen that face before, or rather, it was a face she knew, but in her current state Ara took a long time to recognize it.

... actually, her hair wasn't supposed to be of that color, right?

"Good evening" the woman greeted with a small, polite bow "Or should I say good morning?"

Ara, however, couldn't bring herself to form proper words and pronounce them, let alone actually articulating a reply.

"I am afraid the night is coming to an end, so this will have to be enough. It would seem that we spent too much time walking, yes. Oh, right" she added as she apparently realized something while leaning forward "You are probably wondering what the lesson here is. It is really simple, rest assured. When you are asked for your dessert, you should be a good friend and hand it all over, do you understand? You see, she did not show it, but she really, really wanted that cake. Hers had a flavor she could hardly enjoy, but she said nothing because she was afraid you or the others might think of her as annoying"

"... eh?"

The utter lack of sense of those words nearly made Ara forget what state her arm was in, but that didn't last long. Especially when something hit the table with a thud. Her eyes turned around to see its source. Something similar to a poorly sharpened cleaver, held firmly by one of the two robed figures, had just been placed next to her arm.

"Anyway, this will have to be the last part of our little lesson. Be a good friend and make sure to remember it, alright?" the woman asked with a paradoxically innocent smile on her face as the cleaver was raised high in the air.

"No, wait... s-stop, really... don't do this, you can't, this, no, you, what... "

The cleaver then came crashing down on her arm, crushing flesh and bones, severing tissues and splashing blood and less liquid parts of Ara everywhere, nearly severing the limb off completely, just a few flaps of skin connecting what lied beyond her elbow to the rest of her body. Shards of bones and bits of flesh reached Ara's own face, an indescribable amout of pain filling her mind.

She screamed.

Or so she thought.

She suddenly got up. Her hand, now free from all restraints, frantically reached for her arm, finding it still there, still intact, still in one piece, still attached to her. Her breaths were heavy and ragged, she was drenched in sweat, and her heart was beating so fast it almost felt like it could crack her own ribcage, but she was... in the tavern. She was alright. She was fine. Physically speaking, at least.

Images of her nightmare flashed before her eyes, and she brought both hands to her mouth. It took all of her willpower to keep herself from throwing up, the pain still vivid not just in her mind but in her body as well, the stench still filling her nose, her own screams still echoing in her ears, the taste of vomit still on her tongue. She turned around, if only to make sure that she really was in the tavern they were staying at. Outside the windows she could see the first lights of the day, which meant Rena was probably about to wake up, since the elf was the earliest one to rise among them.

Usually, at least, for someone else was already waking up. That weird girl, Laby, was in the middle of stretching her arms, a long yawn leaving her lips as she did so. She then rubbed her eyes a couple of times, and only then noticed Ara.

"Good mor- good morning!" she greeted her, almost shouting at first but then lowering her voice, probably as she realized that the others were still asleep.

Ara, however, couldn't bring herself to answer since, while the hair, the expression and the manner of speech were different,the woman in her dream had exactly the same face and appearance as Laby.

"... is something wrong? You really don't look good. Ah, you had a bad dream maybe? You can talk to Laby about it if you want! I've head that talking about bad stuff to your friends can help you get over it"

Ara's eyes moved past Laby and to the mirror, the floating mirror that always followed her. Her gaze fell within it, and on the other side of its surface she could see someone, the same woman she had seen in that nightmare. With a smile as innocent as it was terrifying, she brought a finger over her lips, intimating Ara to keep quiet about what had happened, before the surface of the mirror became muddy and ultimately turned into its usual, pitch black glass that only reflected Laby herself.

"... Ara? You're sweating a lot, you know? Oh, I know! You had too many sheets!"

"No, I... "

Even as she answered, her eyes were still fixed on the mirror, her hand firmly holding her arm where the cleaver had chopped it off in the dream.

"... g... good morning... Laby... " she forced herself to say.

"Good morning, Ara!" the girl replied, completely oblivious to everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea of Ara getting her arm cut off without anesthesia for the longest time, but it was only recently that a game finally got me into the mood to try and write it down. It turned into a torture scene though, and the end result is... not quite up to what I had hoped it would be. I also had to go and put some humor at the end apparently, which probably doesn't really fit that well with the rest.
> 
> It could have been longer, I think, the ending feels kind of rushed, but I had the impression it was already getting repetitive so I decided to end it there, though I had initially planned for a couple of bones to be removed before the chop.
> 
> I also get the feeling this whole thing doesn't actually have much impact in the first place, though I guess that's hard to judge as the one who wrote it.
> 
> If you've read this far then thank you, I hope you enjoyed it and I would honestly really like to hear your opinion. I'm not exactly an expert at writing this sort of thing, and I could definitively use some feedback.


End file.
